


Sweatertown- Population: Two

by jojotier



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Capenapping: it's more widespread than you know, Cuddling & Snuggling, Extended Metaphors, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of alcoholism, Meteorstuck, Sweaters, but they're kept to a minimum, like so much overbearingly sweet fluff, rapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojotier/pseuds/jojotier
Summary: Dave's cape gets hijacked, but Karkat knows what to do about it.





	Sweatertown- Population: Two

**Author's Note:**

> God it feels like so long since ive read homestuck....... so here, just to kinda get me back into the game a little bit, have this oneshot!! Hopefully writing for Jojo's so much and starting to write for Golden Kamuy hasn't let me lose my edge...

Never before have you been so betrayed- ousted from your own keep and left out in the cold streets in the middle of London, straining your little newsie cap in hand while asking the nearest long suited gent if they happened to have a copper and a little fuckin’ sympathy for your newly orphaned bastard child shenanigans on this cold winter’s night. 

Just gotta bat your eyelashes and bend low to the ground, pretend that every slightly shiny motherfucker has to be some kind of royalty and make with the Tragic Backstory Charm ™ that would get this story a musical historical fiction adaptation like a hundred years in the future that ironically only the super rich who spit on orphaned puppies would be able to see and throw themselves up their own asses about how cultured they must be to be able to see such a high brow set. Got their heads shoved so far up those tightened anuses that those high brows are ascending from the digestive track and through you know what this entire metaphor has gone through several new layers of irony that you wished would have remained hitherto unknown on this planet.

So anyway, what the hell was all that about anyway?

Your name is DAVE. And your cape just got hijacked.

You look over the small pile there on the couch, made up entirely of girls all snuggled and cuddled and huddled and bundled up in your cape (which was being stretched to its absolute limits, just sitting there gritting its teeth against the pull of its every fiber being strung taut- you go, brave fabric fighter, courageous maroon mercenary, and keep that pile of trolls girls and your sister warm and safe from the barren bullshit metal wonderland you all tumbled ass first into). You think this may possibly be partly your doing.

When you saw your pseudo-sister-definite-pain-in-the-cerebral-cortex-asshole-friend passed out in the ablution trap days ago, vomit still dribbling from her lips and mascara still streaked under her eyes like some glitzy gritty music video documenting her slow spiral into a depression that you can’t for the life of you begin to try and unravel on your own without the coils snapping your shitty skinny arm like a twig, you might have short circuited for a second. 

And by short circuited you mean that shitty cardiovascular hockey puck that’s still somehow in residence in your chest made some sudden commotion, and the first thing you could think to do was give her a blanket. Of course, the shitty spare room where the people who actually bothered to change their linens left their shit, including a myriad of perfectly serviceable blankets, was just next door, but. You just. You weren’t thinking much at the time, okay? 

Your thinkpan got all hells of bent out of shape faster than a turkey could be used to break it straight in half by a harried mother wracking her brains over what the hell she’s supposed to do for dinner since Johnny spent all the money on a useless boomstick and you just happened to have your cape on hand. On your back.

So maybe it was more of a comfort thing than anything? You know you’ve always kinda liked capes and shit- ever since you were old enough to participate in the age old tradition of trying to tie a blanket around your neck and pretend that you’re Superman and that nothing in the world could ever hurt you and that if you were hurt, that’s just because they just happened to have some kryptonite on hand-

…. Wait, shit. You meant bathtub. Bathtub was what you mean, because for some reason being around these trolls is starting to get wires crossed that you know are gonna be a bitch to uncross later when a bomb or some contrived plot shit is inevitably wired into the soft spongy grey matter directly under your mugbone that needs to inevitably be deactivated just in the nick of time.

Thank god you bring yourself out of that self analytical spiral. Jesus, Rose has rubbed off on you more than you ever want to think about.

Rose is still there. Somehow what was a long as hell jam out with just Kanaya, listening to her slowly recount the past few months, turned into a cuddle orgy that the Buggy Cheshire Twins kinda wiggled their way into. Now there’s your ecto-sib, just surrounded by her own personal harem of pretty alien chicks. Damn, good on her. 

Not that you don’t find this all incredibly sweet and not that it’s so pearl clutchingly endearing that you may be shedding one lone tear down your dusty, cold cheek, but now you don’t have a cape and you kinda wanted to keep that.

Only one thing to do now- some good old fashioned 90s radical movie teenage sulking and suffering. By which you mean you’re gonna go mope around Can Town until the Mayor lifts your spirits up to new heights of inspiration and MAYORAL DUTIFULNESS by waving around very passionately. Or until he tries to eat the stuffing from Terezi’s latest hangings. Whichever comes first.

The hallways of the meteor are chilly as an artic tundra, tearing all your senses asunda’, gettin’ down and dirty under your skin like ‘yo whaddup time to let my Jack Frost ass in’, gotta shimmy and shake and Cupid shuffle your way through to uh. Uh fuck. You lose the rhythm you had going on when you hear a distant, pleased honk at the sound of your ill beats. They say that if you go rapping along down the halls, it’ll appease the shitty vent clown enough that he won’t try and talk to you, and honestly you kind of wanna avoid Gamzee at all costs. Especially now that Karkat’s long since spilled the beans on him to you.

You enter the room where the sprawling Can Town is, and speak of the little sweater devil that stole your bloodpusher, there’s Karkat. Gesturing wildly at the Mayor with vague distress and displeasure. Oh, and clicking. Just kinda clicking away.

The Mayor gestures back firmly and mayorally, and that appears to be the end of whatever silent conversation you walked in on, because Karkat sits down in a huff as the Mayor then claps and places a couple of cans from the military outpost that Karkat installed on the other side of the room about a week ago in front of the library, presumably to bring in added protection against the knowledge hub and public gathering place that would surely be a target for invading forces. What a clever and absolutely selfless act. What a Mayor.

You float on in and go sulk beside Karkat, casually folding one leg under you and not making any outward facial expressions at all, as is customary. Karkat glances at you, nubby teeth looking all the more impudent and cute when pressed against that pouty lower lip, before he blinks and sits up a little more. “Oh hey, where’d that stupid excuse for a flimsy snuggleplane of yours go? I don’t think I’ve actually seen you not wear that shitty thing.”

“It got capenapped.” You say very somberly, nodding. “Rose somehow managed to get her evil psychologist fingers on it after bamboozling me with more bullshit Freudian mobius reacharounds than my mere mortal brain could handle and then snatched it out from under me, then went to get cuddled by every other gal on this hurtling hunk of heaping hardware. I don’t even know why she keeps using Freud- the dude was a jackass with way more goddamn issues up the wazoo that he tried to project on everyone else that somehow worked in getting him mad money yo-”

“Dave, I have never, nor do I ever, want to give a single flying shit in the wind about your human monkey brain men.” Karkat deadpans, a delightful trick that you’ve been helping him hone as of late. “Do you see that, Dave? Do you see how the steaming pile of shit does not nor will not attempt to leave my own asshole to even acknowledge the absolute nonsense tumbling out of your seedflap at the speed of sound?”

“Haha, oh man, gross-”

“Dave, shut the fuck up! I’m trying to make a point!!”

“Well you don’t have to make it so strongly- now you just have all this shit, itching to get out, stinking up your asshole-”

“Dave, I’m going to shove you into the fucking ABYSS outside this STUPID FLYING FUCK OF A SITUATIONAL TRANSPORT-!”

“Please, be my goddamn guest- I’m always looking for ways to shove my useless ass into the void. I’m just always here, existing at the edge, waiting for someone to be brave enough to take me by the shoulders and toss me in with the whispering terrors that may or may not reside in my kinda-sister’s head. I’ve always wanted to be able to get in her head like she tries to get in mine.” 

There’s a pause, where you realize you slipped up and accidentally brought up Rose and her not so subtle, ahem,  _ problem,  _ to Karkat, who also pauses when he realizes what happened. 

“... So what really happened with your cape.”

“Oh, you know. Usual passive aggressive shenanigans.” You shrug, trying to play it off. “Rose was like ‘hey your cape is dumb’ but like way more eloquently than a Doctoral Thesis on the inner machinations of ridding brothers of their sick ass gear, and then I was like ‘well hey you know what you’re dumb too, match made in heaven’ and then she walked off with my sweet cape.” 

You don’t mention the fact that Rose looked like hell, or that you could still smell the alcohol on her from the night before. Karkat doesn’t need to worry about those little details anymore than you should be, because in the end it’s just little shit and sure Rose may or may not be slowly trying to destroy her fucking body but it’s her choice to make and you shouldn’t really give a damn about what she wants to do to it. If she wants to be invariably stupid, that’s on her. That’s not. You  _ don’t care,  _ you’re too cool to go prying and analyzing and all that broody shit. 

If she comes to you for help, so be it- but she hasn’t yet, so you won’t press.

“I just kinda miss having Capetown with me, is all.” You finish lamely.

Karkat is staring at you. Sometimes, he gets this weird look on his face- his expression is still sour and twisty like one of those shitty ultra artificial blue raspberry vines covered in pain salt, but there’s something unnerving about the way he stares at you, s if he’s picking you apart. But not just in the way that Rose does, where she takes some sick joy from it- but in this way that makes it feel like he’s just. You don’t know. Like he’s just--

Then, he abruptly stands up, and tries to drag you up by the collar of your capeless god tier Knight pajama top (see it at Macy’s at 50% off at your local clearance event populated entirely by middle aged mothers with their rambunctious little flesh gremlins toddling after them today). Being who you are, instead of getting to your feet like some kind of plebian, you float up alongside him like the godly piece of shit you are. 

“Alright smartass, you’re coming with me!” Karkat declares and you put your hands up in surrender, even though you have not a single goddamn clue what you’re surrendering to. 

“Alright copper, ya got me.” You purposefully put on the absolute worst Texan-New York Mobster Cowboy hybrid of a fake accent that you can manage to pull, drawling literally every other word. “I didn’ t’ink you’s’d be able t’ catch up wit’ me, see? Guess I ain’t gonna get outta dis one eh?”

“Dave, if you ever speak to me in that voice again,” Karkat threatens, dragging your floating form along, “I will claw my auditory sponges out of my fucking ears and shove them right into yours, just so you can hear all the stupid bullshit I’ve ever had to absorb coming from your shitty nubby tooth lined gaper of a piehole played back to you, on repeat, forever.”

Your hands are back up in surrender as you deadpan plead, “Oh no. Please don’t. I don’t know how I’d ever live, hearing my own sexy voice echoed back at me for forever. Please. Babykats. Karling. Red seed bearing fruit of my sight orb. Do have mercy on lil’ ol’ me.”

“Dave Strider, you are fucking  _ impossible.”  _ Karkat groans from low in his chest, before you’re inside of one of the other rooms that may as well just be a secondary living room at this point. It’s not as widely used as to have the prestigious and widely held title of ‘common room’, but it still looks nice in its own kinda jealous stepsister putting on airs kinda way, with plenty of comfy seats to be slam dunked on. Like Karkat is trying to do to you now. And people say that romance is dead.

Karkat climbs on the couch beside where you’ve landed, and he looks at you for a moment longer. It really makes you wonder what goes through his nubby brain, sometimes, when he kinda acts pseudo mysterious like this. Then he clears his throat, looking embarrassed there (but not blushing- you always find it kinda weird how he’s managed to learn how to hide literally all signs of being able to flush any color, even if it maybe makes sense) as he says, “Well, I want to fucking cuddle with you. So.” 

Then, he kinda lifts the hem of his oversized sweater. You stare for a moment, not exactly processing what the hell that means since most of your cuddle seshes include you worming your way somehow into his lap or onto his shoulder, and then it hits with the force of a thousand bricks. “Karkat. Holy shit.”

“Don’t say a fucking WORD, STRIDER-”

“Sweatertown? Are you finally giving my passport the stamp of approval? The visa to that sweet fluffy oasis the Oval Office Okay? Karkat, this is some big stuff here- I gotta really take a moment and savor it, and pretend that I never really wanted to get into Sweatertown even though my tsundere animu blushing says otherwise-”

“Dave, I swear to Christ, if you don’t stop now the next time we make out I’ll bite your tongue off!!”

“- and just imagine the rose petals or cherry blossoms or some shit floating around us and- pause for a second; damn Karkat, kinky- and then just imagine my little school uniform skirt kinda wafting around my knees as I-”

“If you don’t stop, I’m going to preemptively ban your stupid ass.”

“No no no, shit, wait,” You rein yourself in at the threat of exile, scooting closer. “Okay you got me- I’ll be gooder than you could ever imagine or want from me baby, just let me…” You finally worm your way into Karkat’s personal bubble, wiggling your way up underneath his sweater. The thing is not only the biggest goddamn thing that you’ve ever laid eyes on, but now that you’re in it, you can tell that it’s the softest shit you’ve ever felt. Softer than the plush bottoms of a thousand baby smuppets fresh from the shity sci-fi horror hatching. 

That, and Karkat is warm beside you, literally seeming to radiate heat from underneath the places where you can kinda feel some kind of firm, almost springy plating under his leathery skin. The dude’s every alien hunter’s wet dream- no matter how human he looks from afar, the exact second you get close and cop a feel or catch a closer glimpse, all you see are big neon letters pointing towards the fact that yep. This sure is an alien. 

You kind of can’t help but lean into it, even if Karkat is still shorter than you and even if Sweatertown is a little crowded now. Not that you mind a little crowding- as a Texan from the big city, it’s kinda mandatory for you to be used to that- but this is still nice as hell. Sweatertown, population dos, two bros wearing the same lovey dovey get along sweater five inches apart ‘cause they’re gay, the biggest of places. Karkat leans against you too and presses his face against your shoulder, a slow, gentle rolling chirp rising from his throat. It’s legitimately cute enough to steal the show on all of the episodes of Too Cute, combined, easily.

You know you’re a motormouth with the insatiable need to toss yourself off of a cliff at every given opportunity, but right now, it’s kinda nice to just sit and not talk. Just kinda sit there and get cozied up and maybe you’re suddenly feeling kinda dozy and sleepy but that’s no one’s business but your own.

Then, Karkat catches you off guard by saying against your skin, “I have shit I’m thinking that I’m not about to deal with too. So just… stay here.”

For once at a loss for what to say, all you can do is nod, and say, “Yeah, for sure. Sure.”

Neither of you talk for a long time after that. 

But you think you kind of like it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> If you have any requests or want to have a look at snippets of writing I haven't posted, as well as some original work, [why not have a look at my tumblr?](http://jojotier.tumblr.com/)


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